The Horses Know When Something Is Different

The horses know.

That's probably the easiest way to explain it.

They know when the weather is changing. They know when something is moving through the brush. They know when something is out there that I can't see yet.

I'll be looking at them and everything seems normal. They're standing around, eating, doing whatever horses do all day. Then all of a sudden, their heads come up.

Everybody is looking in the same direction.

And I'm thinking, okay...what do you see?

Because I don't see anything.

That happens a lot out here.

There are a lot of horses around, but there's one black horse that I'm around every day and take care of. She knows my voice. They all do, really.

I can be clear on the other side of the property, call out to them, and they'll start making their way in because they know it's time to eat.

It's kind of funny when you think about it.

Fifteen acres is a pretty big place when you're trying to find a horse.

Especially when that fifteen acres is covered in sagebrush, big rocks and boulders, dips in the ground, curves, and little ravines they can wander down into.

They can be right there and still be out of sight.

I've gotten used to that.

What I haven't gotten used to is how much they notice that I don't.

The weather is probably the biggest one.

They can tell when something is changing before I really notice it. You can see it in the way they act. They pay attention to the wind. They notice something changing in the air.

And then there's the part that still makes absolutely no sense to me.

They have a shed.

A perfectly good shed.

When it rains or snows, they can go stand under it.

Do they?

Not always.

Sometimes they'll just stand out there in the rain like that's exactly where they want to be.

Snow too.

Meanwhile, I'm looking at them thinking, you know you have a roof, right?

Apparently they don't care.

They have their favorite places on the property, and they'll stand in those same places for what seems like forever. I don't know what makes that particular spot so special, but they obviously have their reasons.

This is their home too.

They know the property better than I ever could.

The sounds around here are another thing that's interesting.

A train comes through. Big trucks loaded with hay come through. There can be plenty of noise out here, and most of the time the horses don't even care.

They're used to it.

They know those sounds.

A loud truck doesn't necessarily mean anything to them anymore. A train doesn't automatically get their attention. They've heard these things enough times to know they're part of the landscape.

But let something move through the brush and everything changes.

That's when they pay attention.

There are snakes out here. Badgers. Coyotes. All kinds of things moving around that I don't necessarily see.

I've watched the horses be completely still one minute and then suddenly take off across the property.

And I'm standing there looking around trying to figure out what just happened.

Sometimes I can see what scared them.

Sometimes I can't.

That's the part that gets me.

They can be staring straight at something and I can be staring at the exact same spot and see absolutely nothing.

Whatever it is, they know it's there.

Then they're gone.

Running across the property.

And I'm still standing there trying to figure out what the hell they saw.

You learn pretty quickly out here that not seeing something doesn't mean there's nothing there.

The horses know that better than I do.

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Maybe we spend too much time trying to figure out where we're going.

For a long time, getting there as quickly as possible felt like the whole point. Find the destination. Make the plan. Figure out the next job, the next place, the next thing that needed to happen.

There wasn't much time to stop and ask what was happening along the way.

These days, I'm less concerned with getting there as quickly as I can and more interested in the things I can experience along the way.

Maybe that's one of the things that changes when you get into the second half of your life. You start looking at time a little differently.

I spent around fifteen years traveling for work. There were a lot of places, a lot of people, and a lot of experiences packed into those years. Most of the time, it was go, go, go. Get where I needed to be. Do the job. Get to the next destination.

I saw a lot of places, but I didn't always have the time to really experience them.

There was one thing I made sure of, though. When my kids were traveling with me, we stopped.

We went to zoos, bookstores, museums, and places they might never have had the opportunity to experience otherwise. Those moments mattered.

Looking back, I'm grateful for that.

Maybe those moments are part of why I want something different for myself now. Back then, I made sure my kids had time to experience the places we were passing through. Now, I'm finally learning to give myself that same permission.

To stop.

To notice things.

The way the desert smells after something changes in the weather. The way the air feels. The quiet. The calmness that you don't notice when you're constantly rushing toward the next thing.

There's a lot to see when you're not in such a hurry to get somewhere else.

And I've taken plenty of wrong turns in my life.

Some led me the right way. Some definitely did not.

One of my favorite examples actually involves one of the first GPS systems I ever owned.

When Garmin first came out, I was so excited. Having something that could tell me where to go seemed like it opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for traveling.

Until one day it didn't.

That Garmin led me up a mountain and into a logging community. Eventually, I reached a dirt path with a bunch of logs across it.

I remember looking at it thinking, Okay... where exactly does this thing think I'm going now?

There was no road.

And that was probably the moment I learned something that had nothing to do with GPS.

Just because something tells you where to go doesn't mean you have to follow it.

Sometimes you have to stop, look around, use your own judgment, and decide for yourself whether the direction you're being given actually makes sense.

Life can be a little like that.

I've made many mistakes. Many, many mistakes.

So when I talk about trusting your own judgment, I'm not speaking from some place of having all the answers. I'm not.

I'm speaking from experience.

I'm speaking as someone who has taken wrong turns, made decisions that didn't work out, and had to figure out what direction was best for me.

And sometimes the hardest part isn't realizing you took the wrong road.

It's forgiving yourself for taking it.

For a long time, I carried an overwhelming amount of guilt about decisions I'd made. Things I thought I should have done differently. Choices I wished I could go back and change.

But eventually, I had to look at the circumstances I was actually living in at the time.

I was a single parent with small children.

There were jobs that paid more money, and I took them because my kids needed things. I was trying to give them the best life I could.

Could I have made different choices? Of course.

Would a different choice have created a completely different life? Probably.

But that doesn't mean the choices I made were careless.

I was doing the best I could with what I knew, what I had, and what was in front of me at the time.

That's something I've had to learn to give myself.

Grace for the woman who was trying to figure things out while she was living them.

And maybe that's where I am now.

Not trying to rewrite every road I've been down, but finally being able to look at them without needing to punish myself for every turn that didn't go the way I thought it should.

Some choices taught me where I wanted to go.

Some taught me where I didn't.

Some cost more than I expected.

Some gave me things I never would have found any other way.

A road can take you somewhere.

So can a wrong turn.

Sometimes the difference is that one gets you there faster, while the other gives you something to remember.

And maybe now, I don't need to be quite so concerned with getting there.

There is still planning to do. There are still dreams and wants and needs to figure out. There is still a course to map.

But this time, I'm mapping it for myself.

Not for the next destination of work.

Not because someone else says that's where I should go.

For what I want. What I need. What feels right for this part of my life.

And if I take a wrong turn along the way?

I'll figure it out.

I'll turn around if I need to.

Or maybe I'll stay awhile and see what there is to see.

Because after all these years of trying to get somewhere, there's something pretty nice about finally having time to notice where you are.

If you’ve taken a few wrong turns of your own, I’d love to hear about them. What did you find along the way—and what did those detours teach you about where you wanted to go?

If this resonated with you, leave a comment, share it with someone who might need it, or stick around for the next pause.

• MJ

The Desert Pause 🌵

There are certain things I see that can make me stop in my tracks, even though someone standing next to me might look at the exact same thing and wonder what in the world I see in it.

Take an old metal chair, for example. Maybe it has been sitting outside for years. The paint is chipped, the metal is covered in rust, and it probably isn't even very sturdy anymore. It might wobble when you sit in it. Someone with me might look at it and say, “Oh my goodness, that thing is so old and rusty and rickety!”

And I will probably look at them and say, “Yeah. Isn't it awesome?”

I know it sounds a little strange. Most people don't automatically look at something rusty and think it's beautiful. But I have always had an appreciation for old things, especially things that show their age.

When I look at an old object, my mind seems to go backward. I imagine what it looked like when it was new. I wonder what it was made for, who used it, and what it looked like before years of weather and use changed it.

I see what it was before I see what it is now.

Maybe part of that comes from growing up around my uncle.

My uncle is one of those people who collects a lot of things. And I say that with great affection because there is something wonderful about the way he does it. Over the years, he has picked up all kinds of interesting pieces from auctions, travels, and different places he has been. Some are large, some are unusual, and some are the kind of things most people might walk right past without giving them a second thought.

But my aunt loves it.

She is an artist, and she has a completely different way of looking at the things my uncle brings home. She can find an old piece of wood or one of those great big old saws he has collected and immediately see what she can do with it. Something that might look like an old forgotten object to someone else becomes a canvas in her hands.

As a kid, I got to see all of this.

I watched my uncle collect things that had caught his attention, and I watched my aunt look at those same things and see possibilities. I didn't necessarily have the words for it then, but I think I was learning something from both of them.

An old object didn't have to be new to be interesting. It didn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, and it didn't have to serve the same purpose anymore to still have value.

That way of seeing things has stayed with me.

Years later, I can walk past an old piece of machinery and find myself doing exactly the same thing. Instead of seeing a rusty piece of metal sitting in a field, I start imagining what it looked like when it was being used.

Some of the old farm equipment around here really fascinates me.

I can look at the different pieces and almost picture how it worked. There is no doubt that some of these machines were pulled through the fields by an animal, whether it was a horse or an ox. Someone would have been walking behind it, guiding it and relying on this simple piece of equipment to do an important job.

I love looking at all the parts.

The wheels, handles, blades, and pieces of metal all had a purpose. I want to understand how someone looked at those pieces and figured out that if they were put together just the right way, they could accomplish something.

There is something almost beautiful about that kind of simplicity.

Nothing is hidden behind a computer screen. There isn't an engine roaring beneath the hood or a complicated electronic system controlling everything. You can look at the machine and begin to understand what it does simply by looking at it.

Sometimes I find myself wondering how we went from that to the machines we have today.

Modern equipment can be incredibly complicated. We have engines, fuel systems, electronics, hydraulics, computers, sensors, and technology that can do things people generations ago could never have imagined.

And I absolutely appreciate modern technology.

I don't want to give the impression that I think everything was better in the past. It wasn't. There are countless things about modern life that I'm grateful for. Technology has made our lives easier, faster, safer, and in many ways better.

But appreciating where we are doesn't mean we have to forget where we started.

When I look at an old piece of farm equipment, I can imagine someone standing in a field generations ago, trying to make a difficult job a little easier. They didn't have all the technology we have now. They had what they had, and they figured out how to make it work.

There is something admirable about that. It reminds me that simple doesn't necessarily mean unsophisticated. Sometimes simple means someone figured out exactly what was necessary and nothing more.

It also makes me wonder how much we have changed in the way we interact with the things around us. Today, when something breaks, it can be easier to replace it than repair it. When something becomes outdated, we move on to the newer version.

People once had to know their tools. They had to understand how things fit together and figure out how to fix them because there wasn't always a replacement waiting on a shelf.

Maybe that's another reason I like looking closely at old machinery. It reminds me of a time when people had to understand how things worked instead of simply knowing how to operate them.

And there is something else I notice when I look at these objects: time.

The faded paint, worn metal, dents, scratches, and rust are evidence that the object was actually used. It wasn't made yesterday and placed somewhere just to look nice. It had a job.

It did something.

It was part of someone's life.

That is what makes an old object interesting to me.

They see an old chair.

I see what it looked like when someone first brought it home.

They see an old saw.

I see the hands that once held it.

They see a piece of farm equipment.

I see the field it once traveled through.

And sometimes I don't even need to know the actual history of the object. My imagination fills in the blanks.

That is something my uncle and aunt probably influenced without ever realizing it.

I can still picture those unusual things my uncle collected. Great big old saws. Pieces of wood. Things he found at auctions or picked up while traveling. Things that might have made somebody else ask, “Why on earth would you want that?”

My aunt understood.

She could look at one of those old pieces and imagine something completely different. She could take something weathered and forgotten and turn it into art.

Looking back, I realize how fitting that is.

My uncle collected the old things, but my aunt showed me another way to see them.

She saw possibility.

And maybe I've carried a little bit of that with me.

I don't necessarily want to turn every rusty chair into a work of art, but I do want to stop long enough to notice it.

There is so much around us that we rush past because it isn't new, shiny, or useful in the way we expect something to be useful. An old object can become invisible simply because it has been there too long.

I don't want to be that person.

I want to look a little closer. I want to understand what I'm seeing and imagine the life that existed around it.

Maybe that's why an old piece of machinery can hold my attention longer than something brand-new. The new object tells me exactly what it is. The old one makes me curious.

I wonder who made it and who used it. I wonder what the world looked like when that object was considered new. Sometimes, standing there looking at something that has been sitting quietly for decades, I feel connected to all of that.

Not because I want to live in the past.

I don't.

I enjoy the present. I enjoy the technology that surrounds us and the conveniences it provides. But I also think there is value in remembering the people who came before us and the simple solutions they created with whatever they had available.

They don't have to be useful to me anymore. They don't have to be new, polished, or perfect. Sometimes they can just sit there, weathered by time, and still make me stop.

So yes, I may still walk past an old rusty chair and think it's adorable.

Someone beside me might shake their head and say, “That thing is ancient. It's rusty. It's probably going to fall apart.”

And I'll probably smile.

Because I'm not really looking at the rust.

I'm looking at the chair underneath it.

I'm imagining it when it was new, the people who used it, and the life it belonged to.

And for just a moment, that old rusty chair isn't junk at all.

It's a little piece of the past that somehow made it all the way to me.

What about you? Do you have an old, rusty, weathered object that you can't help but love? Tell me about it. I'd love to hear what you see in it that someone else might miss.

There's a big black rubber tub at the junkyard that’s used to hold cattle grain. Now it holds water, and every morning I fill it before I do anything else — before coffee, before checking my phone, before I've fully decided what kind of day this is going to be.

There's no house on this property. That surprises people when I tell them. One side is full of antique farm equipment from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Old machinery rusted into permanent shapes, travel trailers that haven't moved in years, cars that were somebody's project once and are now just weather and metal. The other side belongs to the horses. In between, in the space that's neither junkyard nor pasture, is where the cats live, and where the tub sits.

I didn't set out to build a system. I set out to fix one moment I couldn't stop thinking about.

I was driving by when I heard it — thin, and almost swallowed by the engine. I could have kept going. Most days I probably would have missed it entirely, tires on gravel, my mind already three tasks ahead. But something made me cut the engine and just listen. And there it was again. A meow, small and specific, coming from a place no meow should come from.

She was a kitten then. White, feral, barely old enough to be out on her own, and the water was still climbing the whole time I was running toward the tank. I don't remember deciding to run. I just remember that the fear I'd carried for months, the one about the cats always jumping up on the side of that big tank, had stopped being a fear and become a thing actually happening, right in front of me.

I got her out. That part is simple to say and it wasn't simple to do.

---

I hadn't planned on becoming someone who counts cats. It happened the way most things out here happen — slowly, and then all at once, until I looked up one day and realized I was responsible for something much bigger than I'd meant to take on.

The desert doesn't advertise what's living in it. You hear about the coyotes and the rattlesnakes because people want to be warned about those. Nobody warns you about the feral cats. The ones that show up thin and untrusting behind a shed, that multiply fast if nobody steps in, that live and die out here mostly unseen. I started noticing them the way you notice anything once you're paying attention: a shape at dusk, a set of eyes near the fence line, a small commotion by the water trough that I initially mistook for birds.

Cats don't usually drown in open water. They can generally get themselves out of it. But a stock tank isn't open water. The sides are too high, too smooth, the water always moving because it's always refilling. A grown cat has a fighting chance. A kitten doesn't. That's the fear I lived with before I even had language for it: that one of them would go up on the side of that tank the way I'd watched them do a hundred times, and one time it wouldn't end the way it always had before.

Then it didn't.

After I pulled her out, I didn't feel finished. I felt like I'd been given a warning I couldn't ignore. So I found the tub. Deep enough to hold real water, but nothing like the trough. I dropped a rock inside it, angled so even the smallest kittens can climb up and over the lip and get down to the water without needing to jump for it. It's not elegant. It's a cattle feed tub with a rock in it. But it's done exactly what I needed it to do.

What I didn't expect was that it would also become the way I keep track of who's out here.

I have upward of thirty cats that have gone through trap-neuter-release with a veterinary clinic nearby. Caught, spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and released back to the only home they know. You can tell which ones by the clip in their ear, a small notch that most people driving past would never notice or understand. I notice it every time. It means that cat is counted. It means somebody already made sure it wouldn't just keep multiplying into more mouths I can't feed, more kittens at risk of the same tank that almost took the white one.

The water bowl is where I see them clearest. Not hiding, not skittish in the way they are everywhere else on the property. Just cats, drinking, in daylight, close enough that I can count clipped ears and know who's been through the program and who I still need to catch. It's become a kind of census I never meant to start taking. Some mornings it's two or three. Some mornings it's more than I can count before they scatter.

The kitten from the tank is grown now. Fully grown, still wild, still keeps her distance. I've never once gotten close enough to touch her, and I don't think I ever will. But she's not afraid of me. She comes around every day for water, for food, calm and unhurried about it, like we have an understanding that doesn't require anything more than that. Sweet, in her own way, on her own terms.

That's the part I didn't expect. That saving something doesn't mean it owes you closeness. Sometimes it just means it trusts you enough to keep coming back.

My own cat, Nubby, doesn't have any of this to worry about. She's a fluffy gray cat, mine in the way the others aren't. She rides in the truck with me, sleeps wherever the light is best, watches me fill the tub every morning from somewhere close but uninvolved, like she knows this ritual isn't really about her. She's never needed the water bowl to survive. She's just always near it, and always near me, the one constant in a yard full of animals who come and go on their own terms.

Then there's the Siamese. I haven't named her, she isn't mine the way Nubby is, but she's been tame from the very first day I saw her, which still doesn't make sense to me given where she showed up. She has one blue eye and one gold eye, not a bright yellow but something warmer, and she's easily the most striking cat on the property. I've offered her a place inside more than once. She has no interest. She prefers it out here, among the trailers and the horses and the tub, and I've stopped trying to talk her out of it. Some of them just aren't meant to be indoor cats, and she's never once acted like she thinks she's missing something by staying.

---

Some mornings I catch the order of things without meaning to. The younger ones, the smaller and less established, seem to know they've got a window. They get in and get what they can before the more senior cats wander over and take up the space around the tub like they own it, because in a way, they do. Nobody taught the little ones that hierarchy. They just seem to understand it, the way they understand which humans are safe and which aren't, without anyone explaining it to them. I don't referee it. I just watch it happen, the same small negotiation playing out morning after morning, and I think it says something about how order finds its way into a place that looks, from the outside, like it doesn't have any.

Every morning I fill it, even on the days nothing comes. That's the part I didn't expect to learn — that the leaving-out matters as much as the drinking. Somewhere along the way I stopped checking it to see who'd visited and started checking it because that's just what I do now, the way some people check the mail or lock the door twice.

Maybe that's what this place has actually taught me. Not that the animals need me. A lot of them managed long before I got here, and some of them will outlast me too. It's that I need the leaving-out. The tub isn't only for them. It's proof, every morning, that I'm still someone who notices, still someone who tends to something outside of my own wanting.

The white cat doesn't know I remember the sound she made that day. Nubby doesn't know she's the reason I can tell the difference between a cat that's safe and a cat that's still finding its way there. And still — I fill the bowl.

I think that's the whole practice, actually. Not the being noticed. The noticing.

The Spirit of a Raccoon

There is something I have to admit about raccoons.

I used to think they were pests.

Not because I had personally had some terrible encounter with one. I didn't have a raccoon break into my house, steal my belongings, or chase me down the road. I didn't have some dramatic raccoon story that made me decide they were awful.

I just listened to everybody else.

I remember being at a campground where people talked about raccoons constantly. The pesky raccoons. The raccoons getting into the garbage. The raccoons making a mess. The raccoons getting into everything. They were described as nuisances, scavengers, little troublemakers that apparently existed solely to ruin someone's evening.

So I figured that's what they were.

Basically a giant rat with a mask.

And I know there are people out there who absolutely love rats, so I'm probably going to offend somebody with that comparison. Apparently rats have their people too.

But I didn't know any better.

Then I actually started watching raccoons.

And that changes things.

Because when you stop hearing what everybody else says about an animal and actually watch the animal itself, sometimes the story changes completely.

Raccoons are adorable.

I'm not even going to pretend to be objective about this anymore.

They're absolutely adorable.

They have these enormous little bodies with these ridiculously tiny hands. Then they have these little chattery mouths and those sharp little teeth sticking out of a pointy face, and when they start eating, there is this little nom nom nom nom nom that happens that I could watch forever.

There is something almost comical about it.

Big body.

Tiny hands.

Pointy mouth.

Nom nom nom.

And apparently the entire world is ending if they don't find something to eat.

I can't help it. I think they're cute.

But somewhere along the way, I started seeing something else, too.

They're clever. They're mischievous. They're stubborn. They're resourceful. They're curious. They're adaptable.

And more than anything, they're misunderstood.

People call them scavengers as though the word itself is an accusation.

But what exactly is wrong with scavenging when you're trying to survive?

A raccoon isn't sitting around thinking, “How can I ruin someone's evening tonight?”

It's thinking, “Where is the food?”

That's a pretty big difference.

If it gets into somebody's garbage, well...

Darn it.

It was hungry.

It found something that smelled like food. It investigated. It figured out how to get into it. And then it ate.

That's not a personal attack.

That's survival.

We put bird feeders outside and then complain when squirrels eat from them.

We leave food out for stray cats and then get annoyed when another animal discovers it.

We put garbage outside full of things that smell interesting and then become offended when a wild animal with an incredible sense of smell investigates.

It's almost as if we've created a giant outdoor buffet and then become personally offended when somebody shows up hungry.

Raccoons didn't make the garbage.

We did.

And yet somehow they're the problem.

Maybe that's what happens when you actually pay attention.

There is a particular raccoon memory that probably cemented all of this for me.

When I first moved out here into the desert, I had adopted a cat who lived outside. I would leave her food on top of a large water barrel because she could jump up there and eat.

One day I came home and there was this enormous raccoon sitting up there eating the cat food.

And when I say enormous, I mean enormous.

At the time, I was convinced this raccoon had to weigh fifty pounds.

Looking back, he was probably closer to twenty-five.

But he was huge.

And absolutely adorable.

Instead of chasing him away, I sat in my car and watched him eat.

There was something fascinating about watching this giant raccoon carefully grab pieces of food with those tiny little hands.

He wasn't aggressive.

He wasn't trying to get into anything other than the food.

He wasn't looking for trouble.

He was hungry.

So I watched.

Later that night, I heard a noise outside again.

And I thought, “Oh, he's back.”

Of course he was.

So I decided to take a peek and make sure there was still food out there.

I cracked the door open just a little bit.

And there they were.

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When We Caught Butterflies

When I was a kid, we caught butterflies.

You could run around after them, try to get close enough, watch them flutter just out of reach. Back then, they were simply butterflies. Beautiful little things flying around that you could see everywhere.

You didn't stop to think about whether there would be fewer of them someday.

I remember the yellow ones especially. There seemed to be so many of them. Today, you don't see nearly as many.

Now, when a butterfly flutters past me in the desert, I notice.

I don't chase it.

I just watch.

There's a butterfly sanctuary at a museum not far from here, and I used to take my children there when they were little. It was such a beautiful place to wander through, surrounded by delicate little creatures moving from flower to flower.

You learn pretty quickly how delicate they are. You can't just reach out and touch those wings. The colored silk on those wings comes off too easily.

Sometimes one will land on you.

That's always the best part.

You don't reach for it. You don't try to make it stay. You just sit still and let it decide when it's ready to leave.

There's something about that I still love.

They start out looking like these little caterpillar creatures, and somehow they become these colorful, winged things that flutter around from flower to flower.

So much of the desert is rough.

Cactus. Rocks. Dry ground. Thorny plants. Everything looks like it has figured out how to survive without needing much from anybody.

And then, every once in a while, there's a little flower.

You see it and think, Oh.

That's pretty.

Then you see a butterfly.

Oh.

Look at that.

A little flower.

A little butterfly.

A little bit of color moving through all that brown.

And for a moment, I just stand there and enjoy it.

Thanks for being here — for pausing long enough to notice the small things with me. If you'd like more of these, subscribe below.

There are things you know without ever really knowing them.

I had seen them in storybooks. I had heard people talk about them. I knew what a hummingbird was supposed to look like. The way you know something from pictures.

But I'd never actually seen one.

Where I grew up, it was cold. Hummingbirds weren't part of the everyday scenery, so they were just one of those little creatures that existed somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. Somewhere I wasn't.

Then one day I was sitting on the porch and heard this strange little buzzing sound.

Something was moving so fast I thought it was a bee. All I could register was the hum.

And then I realized what I was looking at. A hummingbird.

Well.

A hummingbird!

I remember thinking how unbelievably tiny it was. And beautiful. And precious. They really are like little jewels with wings.

There's something almost comical about that moment when your brain catches up with your eyes. You think, Oh, I know what you are. I've just never seen you before.

The little bird wasn't doing anything particularly dramatic. It was simply going after the flowers my friend had planted along the side of her house. She deliberately plants certain flowers to attract different hummingbirds, so they come around looking for exactly what she's put there for them.

I didn't know any of that before.

Now I know that little hum.

That's probably my favorite part.

I can be sitting outside and hear that familiar sound, and immediately I know. My attention changes before I even see the bird.

There you are.

And then I start looking.

Sometimes I'll search around until I find it, because once you've learned that sound, it's hard not to want to see who's making it.

And every time I do, there's this little flutter of excitement. Which seems appropriate, considering I'm looking at a bird whose wings are doing exactly that.

It's funny how quickly something unfamiliar can become recognizable.

The first time, I thought it was an insect.

Now I can hear one before I see it.

The world keeps introducing itself.

Sometimes it's something big.

Sometimes it's a tiny jewel hovering over a flower.

And sometimes, all it takes is a little hum to make you look up.

If you enjoy these little pauses and the stories that come from them, you're welcome to subscribe to The Desert Pause and come sit with me awhile.

— MJ

The Desert Pause 🌵

There is a whole desert sitting outside my door, and sometimes I'll be sitting right in the middle of it staring at a six-inch screen.

And that's when I know I've probably been looking at my phone too much.

The funny thing is, I'm usually not even looking for anything. I'm checking something. A message. Facebook. My notifications. The weather. Maybe I'm checking to see how something is performing.

Actually, that last one is usually the reason.

I work hard on social media. I'm not casually throwing things out there and hoping for the best. I want to know what's working. What's getting attention. What's falling flat. What people are responding to. If something isn't working, I don't want to keep doing the same thing over and over just because I've always done it that way.

So I pay attention.

I track things.

I check.

And honestly, I think that's a good thing.

But there's a difference between checking because I'm working and checking because I've gotten so used to looking at the screen that I don't know what to do with the empty space anymore.

That's the part I'm paying attention to now.

Because there is a whole life happening outside of that screen.

And sometimes I'm missing it.

When I go outside, it's usually because I need a break.

I've been staring at my phone. I've been working on my computer. I've been thinking about content, numbers, posts, comments, everything that comes with trying to build something online.

Then I step outside.

And my brain goes from pressure to relief in about 0.2 seconds.

It's almost immediate.

I'm not thinking about what post needs to go up next.

I'm not checking whether something got another hundred views.

I'm not wondering if somebody commented.

I'm just sitting outside.

There's the desert.

There's the sky.

There's the animals.

There's the sound of whatever is moving around out there.

And on those slightly warm days when the sun feels good on your skin, there's really nothing else I need at that moment.

That's when I notice how much I've been looking down.

Not necessarily because the phone is bad.

It isn't.

My phone is a huge part of my life.

It's how I work.

It's how I stay connected with people.

It's how I talk to people.

It's how I play games and entertain myself.

It's how I take pictures.

It's how I keep up with everything happening online.

Out here, it's also my connection to the outside world.

I'm way out in the desert. If one of my charging cables breaks, it's not like I can run down the street and grab another one. The nearest city is about an hour away. If I order something from Amazon, I might be waiting three to five days for it to arrive.

So when one of my electronics goes down, I feel it.

There's a real reason I don't like being without my phone.

It's not just some little inconvenience.

This is what I have right now.

So when I put my phone down, part of my brain still wants to know that it's there.

I used to have a harder time with that than I do now.

Putting the phone down could feel almost like taking off my right arm, leaving it sitting on the table, and walking away.

My brain would immediately start with:

What if I need it?

What if something happens?

What if somebody messages me?

What if I need to check something?

What if I'm missing something?

I needed to know what was going on.

Even when nothing was actually going on.

That's the funny part.

Sometimes there wasn't anything I needed to check.

I just felt like I needed to check.

And I'm starting to recognize the difference.

That's been a big shift for me.

If I'm working, I'm working.

I'm going to check my numbers. I'm going to see what's working. I'm going to pay attention to what's getting traction and what's not. I'm going to make decisions based on that information because that's part of what I'm building.

But when I'm not working, I'm trying to learn how to actually take a break.

Because if I'm sitting outside with my face buried in my phone, I'm not really taking a break.

I'm just changing screens.

And there's a lot of life around me that I don't want to miss.

The animals are a big part of that.

I can sit outside and watch them doing whatever it is they happen to be doing.

The cats wandering around.

The horses.

Birds coming and going.

Something moving through the grass.

Sometimes there's absolutely nothing dramatic happening.

And that's okay.

I don't need something dramatic to happen every time I step outside.

Sometimes it's enough to sit there and watch.

Listen.

Feel the sun.

Notice the wind.

Let my brain stop trying to process information for a few minutes.

I've also found another way to get myself out of my head.

The ice plunge.

I love it.

And honestly, when I first started doing it, I wasn't sure I would.

Getting into a stock tank full of ice-cold water in the middle of the desert sounds like a pretty strange way to relax.

The first few times, it was almost the opposite of relaxing.

That first shock hits your body and your brain immediately starts screaming, “What are you doing?”

It felt a little scary.

Almost like I was going to tip myself right into an anxiety attack.

But then I stayed with it.

I settled into the cold.

I focused on what was happening instead of fighting it.

And something changed.

The more I settled into it, the more relaxed I became.

Not just physically.

Mentally.

And that's something I didn't expect.

There's something about being completely focused on what your body is experiencing that doesn't leave much room for everything else.

You can't be thinking about your notifications when you're sitting in an ice bath.

Well, I suppose you could.

But you're probably going to miss the point.

For me, it became one of those moments where my brain finally stopped running ahead of me.

After everything that's happened over the years, it took a long time—since 2019, really—to get to a place where I could wake up and simply feel okay.

Not necessarily happy.

Not necessarily excited.

Just okay.

And there is something about that cold water that snaps me into the present in a way almost nothing else does.

It makes me feel here.

Right now.

Not yesterday.

Not tomorrow.

Not online.

Right here.

Maybe that's part of what I'm really trying to learn with the phone.

Not how to live without it.

I don't want to live without it.

I like my phone.

I like what it allows me to do.

I like talking to people.

I like creating things.

I like checking my work.

I like playing games.

I like being connected.

I'm not interested in pretending I want to disappear into the desert and throw all my electronics into a river.

That would last about five minutes.

But I also don't want my phone to become the place where I spend every spare second.

There has to be some middle ground.

And I'm finding it slowly.

If I'm working, I'm working.

If I'm outside taking pictures, I'll have my phone.

If I'm talking to someone, I'll answer.

If something important comes up, I'll deal with it.

But if I go outside because I need a break, maybe I don't need to bring the entire internet with me.

Sometimes I can just sit down.

Sometimes I can leave the phone inside.

Sometimes I can put it on the table and walk away.

And yes, there is still a little voice in my head that wonders what I'm missing.

But that voice is getting quieter.

I'm starting to notice something else instead.

What I'm missing when I don't put it down.

I'm missing the way the sun feels on my skin. I'm missing the birds, the cats doing whatever weird cat thing they're doing, the horses, and all those little changes happening around me while I'm busy looking at something happening somewhere else.

That's the trade-off I didn't really think about before.

Every time I look down at the screen, I'm choosing not to look at something else.

Sometimes that's exactly what I need.

And sometimes it's not.

The desert makes that pretty obvious.

The animals are moving around.

The light is changing.

The weather is shifting.

Something is always making some kind of sound.

And somehow, watching all of that makes it easier for me to remember that I don't have to fill every quiet moment.

I can stop.

I can sit.

I can look around.

I can let a quiet moment be a quiet moment.

I don't have to know what's happening online every minute.

And I don't have to feel guilty about taking a break from something I'm working so hard to build.

That's probably the biggest thing I'm figuring out.

Putting my phone down isn't about rejecting the life I've built online.

It's about making sure I don't miss the life happening right in front of me while I'm building it.

There is a whole desert sitting outside my door.

There are animals moving around.

There's sunlight on the ground.

There's wind coming through.

There are days when the heat is almost unbearable and days when the temperature is just right.

There are mornings when everything is waking up and evenings when everything starts settling down.

All of that is happening whether I look at my phone or not.

So sometimes I put it down.

Not forever.

Not even for very long.

Just long enough to look up.

And usually, there's something worth seeing.

Maybe that's enough for now.

I still need my phone. I'm still going to work. I'm still going to check the numbers and answer messages and do all the things I do online.

I just don't want to miss everything happening out here while I'm doing it.

MJ.

The Desert Pause 🌵

If you liked hanging out here with me for a few minutes, you can subscribe to The Desert Pause. I'd love to have you back. 🌵

There are certain hours in the desert when I don't even have to look at a thermometer to know it's too hot. You can feel it before you get very far from the door. Those are the hours when the desert seems to empty itself out.

The birds aren't as noticeable. The lizards aren't sitting out where I can see them. Even the feral cats that are usually wandering around seem to disappear. If I drive out along the desert during the hottest part of the day, I might see one tucked into the tall grass or hiding in the shade around the sheds. But there isn't much movement. For a few hours, it can look like everything has simply disappeared.

But I've been here long enough to know better. The animals haven't gone anywhere. They've just gotten smarter about where they spend the hottest part of the day. Honestly, I've done the same thing.

For now, this is where I am. I'm a nomad, so I'm used to moving around. There are times when I don't know exactly where I'll be next or how long I'll stay somewhere. That's just part of this life. Plans change. Circumstances change. Sometimes you stay longer than you expected. Sometimes you leave sooner.

Right now, I'm staying put for a while. I'm not going to say exactly how long, because I honestly don't know. There are some things going on that make staying here the right choice for now, and I'm comfortable letting it be what it is. I've learned not to force a timeline onto everything. I tend to move with things. Move with the wind. See what comes next.

There are scorching days, absolutely, the kind that make you rethink every unnecessary trip outside. But the heat is starting to break a little, and there are moments when this place feels almost perfect. I like being here. I like the land. I like the animals. And I like the fact that I never quite know what I'm going to see when I step outside. It makes this a pretty unique place to stay for a while.

Read more

Why Do Ravens Always Seem to Be Watching?

There are some days when I see ravens everywhere. Then there are days when I go looking for one, because I've gotten curious, and I can't find a single one. Not one. It's funny how that works. When I'm not thinking about them, I'll look up and there they are. One sitting way off in the distance. Another crossing the sky. Sometimes several of them together. But the minute I start looking around for one, suddenly the desert is completely raven-free. Maybe that's part of what makes them so interesting to me.

I've always thought ravens were beautiful. There's something about them that looks different from other birds. Dark and mysterious. Sometimes when I see one sitting against the desert sky, they almost look ancient to me. I know that probably sounds a little far-fetched. But there really is something about the way a raven looks that makes me think of something that's been here for a very long time. Almost like something left over from another time. And maybe that's part of why I notice them.

Most of the birds around here are much more comfortable coming close. The little birds come into the yard, looking for whatever they can find, not particularly concerned about whether I'm sitting nearby. Around the horses and their feed, there's usually some kind of bird activity happening. The ravens are different. At least, the ones I see. They tend to stay off in the distance. I'll spot one on a fence post, or somewhere farther out, but they don't usually come right up into the yard to see what they can get. They're there. They're just not necessarily interested in being right next to me. For a long time, that's really all I thought about them. Beautiful birds that came and went through the desert.

Then I went through the desert museum. There was a raven there, and the people around it were talking about it in a way that caught my attention. Not like it was just another bird in an exhibit. They were talking about how smart it was. The man who was with the raven seemed to interact with it almost like it was his pet. That was unusual for me to see. I'm used to seeing ravens in the wild. You see them coming and going. They do their thing, and you do yours. But there I was, watching a person interact with one up close, and I was seeing something I hadn't really thought about before. This wasn't just some ordinary bird. Or maybe it was an ordinary raven, and I was the one who hadn't understood what I was looking at.

That distinction has stayed with me. Because sometimes something doesn't actually change. Our perspective does.

If you don't know much about ravens, you can look at one and think, "there's a bird." And that's it. A bird sitting on a pole. A black bird flying across the sky. A bird making its way through the desert. But once you've seen one up close, the way I did at the museum, and watched someone interact with it like it was more than just a bird, that same bird looks a little different. You start wondering what it's doing. What it remembers. What it notices. What it's figured out. And maybe that's why ravens can give you the feeling that they're watching. Because after that day, I started wondering just how much they're paying attention to their surroundings, probably a lot more than I used to give them credit for. Once you start wondering that about a bird, it's hard to look at one the same way again.

The funny thing is, I don't think of myself as someone who studies ravens. I just like them. I notice them. And now, apparently, I look for them. There's a difference. Some days I'll be outside and notice one without even trying, that dark shape sitting way out there, and think, there's one. Other days I'll actually look. I'll scan the sky. Check the fence posts. Wonder if there are any around. Nothing. It's almost as if they've decided that if I'm going to make a point of looking for them, they're going to make me work for it.

Of course, I know that's probably not what's happening. That's just the human part of my brain making a story out of it. The ravens aren't sitting somewhere saying, "MJ is looking for us today. Everybody hide." But it does make me think about how much of the natural world we miss simply because we aren't looking. And how much we can miss even when we are. Because looking and seeing aren't always the same thing.

I've probably seen hundreds of ravens in my life without knowing much about them. I saw the shape. The color. The way they flew. I noticed they were usually farther away. But I didn't think about what was happening inside that bird. I think that's true about a lot of things. We can become so familiar with something that we stop really seeing it. A bird becomes a bird. A cactus becomes a cactus. A desert road becomes just the road you drive down. An animal becomes part of the scenery. Then something happens. Maybe somebody tells you something you didn't know. Maybe you see something from a different angle. Maybe you spend a few minutes watching instead of simply passing by. And suddenly the ordinary thing isn't quite so ordinary anymore.

That's what happened with the raven for me. The raven at the museum didn't suddenly become something different because of what I saw that day. It was already whatever it was. It didn't suddenly become more interesting because somebody explained it to me. It was already interesting. I just had more information to bring to the way I was seeing it. That's the part I keep coming back to. Perspective doesn't always change the thing you're looking at. Sometimes it changes what you're capable of noticing about it.

Maybe that's why the ravens seem mysterious to me, not because I think there's something supernatural about them. I don't. It's more that there's so much about them I don't know, and I like that. I don't need every mystery explained. Sometimes it's enough to know there's more going on than what I can see.

When I see a raven sitting far off in the desert now, I wonder about it a little differently. Maybe it's looking for food. Maybe it's watching another raven. Maybe it noticed something moving that I haven't seen. Maybe it's simply resting. Or maybe it really is looking around and taking everything in. I don't know, and I think that's okay.

There's something humbling about remembering that I'm not the only one doing the observing. We tend to think of ourselves as the ones watching nature. We watch the birds. We watch the animals. We take pictures. We point things out to each other. We stand there and say, look at that. But nature isn't a movie playing for us. Those animals are living their lives. They're noticing things. Responding to things. Making choices. Communicating. And sometimes they're probably watching us right back.

That idea makes me smile, especially when I think about the ravens I see from a distance. Maybe I've been thinking they're mysterious because they're keeping their distance. Maybe they're just being ravens. Or maybe they're perfectly content to sit somewhere high up and observe everything happening below them. There's something very raven-like about that. At least in my imagination.

And then there's the other thing I've noticed since becoming more interested in them. Sometimes I don't see any at all. I can spend a whole day wondering where they've gone. I'll look around because I'm curious. Nothing. Then another day, without looking for them, I'll see several. It reminds me that the desert doesn't really care what I'm hoping to see that day. It isn't going to put on a show for me. The ravens aren't going to appear because I've decided I want to photograph one. The lizards aren't going to come out because I'm ready to watch them. The birds don't follow my schedule.

And maybe that's part of what I love about living around all of this. There's always something happening, but it doesn't necessarily happen when you're looking for it. You have to be there. You have to notice. And sometimes you have to be willing to look without expecting to find anything. That's a different kind of attention. It's less about searching for something specific and more about being open to whatever happens to be there. One day it might be a raven. Another day it might be a bird at the horse feed. A lizard crossing the dirt. A movement in the distance. Or nothing at all. And then, when you least expect it, you look up and there it is. That black shape against that huge desert sky. Watching. Or maybe just looking. Maybe those are two different things too.

I don't know if ravens really seem to be watching because they're especially interested in us, or because that one afternoon at the museum made me start wondering what they're thinking. Maybe it's a little of both. What I do know is that seeing that one raven changed the way I see them. Before the museum, a raven was a beautiful, mysterious bird I noticed in the distance. Afterward, it became a beautiful, mysterious bird that seemed a lot smarter than I'd given it credit for, one I realized I knew almost nothing about. That's a pretty big difference.

It makes me wonder how many other things around us are like that. How many ordinary-looking things have entire stories behind them that we don't know? How many animals have behaviors we haven't noticed? How many people have qualities we've never noticed because we've only ever looked at them from one angle? How many things have we already decided we understand simply because we've seen them before? Maybe perspective isn't always about changing your mind. Sometimes it's simply about giving yourself permission to look again.

That's what the raven has done for me. I still see them the same way sometimes, a dark bird in the distance, a shape against the sky, something ancient-looking moving across the desert. But now there's a little more curiosity attached to that sight. I wonder what it knows. I wonder what it remembers. I wonder what it's looking at. And every once in a while, I wonder if it's wondering about me too. Probably not in the way I imagine. But I like the thought, because there's something comforting about the idea that we're sharing the same piece of desert for a moment. I'm looking at a raven. The raven is looking out across the desert. Maybe we're both just taking in the same landscape from completely different perspectives. And maybe that's all it takes to make something familiar feel new again.

The raven didn't change. I did. I just learned to look at it differently. And now, when I see one sitting way off in the distance, I don't just see an ordinary bird anymore. I see something that looks like it's been here forever. Something that seems smart enough to keep its own secrets. Something curious enough to keep watching. And maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll catch one watching back.

— MJ

The Desert Pause 🌵

They were just part of a little desert sketch I'd been playing with, one of those quiet drawings that already feels like it belongs in an old field journal, with its faded sepia paper, pencil-and-ink lines, a wildflower standing in the middle of all that open desert. It looked like something someone had stopped for a few minutes to draw, because the patch of ground was worth remembering.

I didn't want to turn it into a cartoon.

I didn't want the flower bursting open or butterflies flying around like a Disney movie. I wanted the kind of movement you might actually see if you sat there quietly enough. A little breeze. A flower shifting on its stem. A butterfly passing through.

So I made one version with several butterflies drifting around the wildflower, each moving a little differently. One passed through the frame while another seemed to linger. Nothing dramatic happened. The scene didn't need a plot.

Then I made a second version. This time there was only one butterfly, and it came down and settled on the flower.

Watching them, I kept thinking about how life out here has its own rhythm. There are horses grazing in the early light, wide open sky, more stars than you'd know what to do with once the sun goes down. But the desert doesn't hand you any of that easily. It asks something of you first.

Butterflies fit into that in a way that always catches me off guard. They're whimsical in a way almost nothing else out here is, delicate where everything around them has had to toughen up just to survive. They land on a wildflower and suddenly the whole scene feels a little softer, a little more like a place someone would choose to be, not just endure.

There's something about butterflies moving together, too, that always pulls me back toward family. Maybe it's the way they drift near each other without needing to stay close, each one going its own direction and somehow still part of the same small scene. Nobody's herding them. Nobody's telling them where to go. They just happen to be in the same patch of desert at the same time, and for a little while that's enough.

As we grow older we tend to go out on our own. That seems to be the normal order of things. You leave, you scatter, you build your own life somewhere else, and most days that's exactly how it should be. We stay busy, we try to keep up with the phone calls, and it feels like we're keeping up with each other's lives. But it isn't until you're actually back together, having a real conversation face to face, that you understand what's really been happening in someone's life. The parts that don't come through in a quick call. The parts somebody only tells you once they're sitting across from you. It's truly wonderful when everyone comes back together again, even if it's only for a little while. One butterfly passing through the frame while the others drift off felt a little like that, everybody moving at their own pace, nobody waiting on anybody else. And the one that finally landed and stayed, even briefly, felt like the moment everyone's actually in the same room again. The kind of moment you don't plan for and can't really schedule. It just happens, and then it's over, and you're grateful you were paying attention when it did.

That's really what the whole scene came down to for me. Not the butterflies themselves, but the difference between something passing through and something choosing, even briefly, to stay. A butterfly doesn't announce either one. It simply moves. Maybe it lands, maybe it doesn't, maybe it stays three seconds and disappears behind the next flower. There isn't a lesson attached to it.

That's something I appreciate more and more about the desert. It isn't interested in explaining itself. A cactus blooms because it's time to bloom. A lizard sits on a rock because the rock is warm. A bird lands on a fence post and looks around a while before deciding whether to stay. Everything has its own reason for being there, and none of it requires an explanation from me.

The butterflies fit right into that. They weren't performing. They weren't waiting for someone to take a picture. They weren't trying to become part of a beautiful moment. They were simply being butterflies, doing what butterflies do, with or without anyone watching. And there's something about watching a small creature stop that makes everything around it feel quieter too. The flower doesn't need to become more beautiful. The butterfly doesn't need to do anything extraordinary. For a few seconds, the whole scene is complete exactly as it is, and even out here, where the pace is supposed to be slower, that kind of stillness catches me off guard. I still find myself rushing through a moment before I've actually let myself be in it.

Then a butterfly lands on a flower, and for just a moment there's nowhere else to be.

There are people who make us feel that way too. You can be with someone who doesn't need constant conversation. You can sit on a porch, walk down a dirt road, watch the sky change colors, without either of you feeling like the silence needs filling. Those are the friendships I treasure. The ones where you can say "look" and point at something small, a bird in the distance, a strange cloud, a flower growing where it has no business growing, and the other person just looks. They don't need to understand why you're pointing it out. They just know that if you noticed it, it's worth a second glance.

I've always thought there was something lovely about sending someone a picture for no particular reason. Not because you have something important to say. Not because you need a response. Just because something crossed your path and, for whatever reason, your first thought was of them.

You would like this. That's it. Sometimes the message doesn't even need those words. The picture says them.

Maybe the person on the other end is at a desk, or in a waiting room, or stuck in traffic, having one of those days where everything feels like too much. Then their phone lights up. There's a butterfly. A wildflower. A little patch of desert. For a moment, their attention moves somewhere else, away from whatever was weighing on them and toward something small and unbothered and alive.

That's part of what I love about making these tiny animated sketches. They're small enough that they don't demand anything from the person watching. You don't have to stop for five minutes. You don't have to understand the technology behind it. You don't even have to know why it makes you smile. You can just watch a few butterflies move across an old sketchbook page, and then watch one settle on a flower, and let that be enough.

Maybe you send it to someone. Maybe you don't.

But if you do, I hope it feels less like sharing content and more like tapping someone on the shoulder and saying, "hey, look at this."

Because sometimes that's all friendship needs. A tiny moment. A little beauty. And someone who understands why you wanted them to see it.

— MJ

The Desert Pause

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I never know if it's the same lizard. I've stopped needing to know.

There's a rock across the driveway from the junkyard, tucked back behind some tall grass and a pile of old farm equipment near the main road.

Just the tip of a stone sticking up through the dirt, maybe the size of a dinner plate. Nothing special. There are rocks like that all over this place.

But this one has a little more life around it.

A lizard.

There's no house out here. One side of the property is the junkyard with the old farm equipment, and the other belongs to the horses. I drive in every morning to feed and water them, and on my way I stop at what I call the cat station, a spot where the cats who've found their way onto the property gather for food and water.

There's a whole colony of them. More than thirty have been spayed, neutered, and vaccinated through the local clinic at this point. Raccoons show up too, along with plenty of other things that pass through during the night.

That rock sits right at the entrance, the first thing I pass on my way in to check the horses.

And that's where I started noticing him.

He comes out onto the stone early in the morning, sunbathing while the light is still low and the desert hasn't disappeared into the heat yet. He'll sit perfectly still for a while, then flick that little tongue, bob his head, and suddenly I can't help but stop and watch, even with the horses waiting and the cats already circling the food.

I love that kind of thing.

Lizards, snakes, tortoises—pretty much anything that lives out here catches my attention. There's always something going on if you take the time to look.

The trouble with this little guy is that I can't tell if he's always the same little guy.

Sometimes he looks bigger. Sometimes smaller.

I'll see him one morning and think, That's a good-sized lizard.

Then a few days later, I'll see one sitting on the same rock and wonder if he somehow shrunk.

I just don't know if I'm watching one lizard who claimed that rock as his spot, or several who have all decided it's a pretty good place to warm up.

I've never gone over to find out.

Partly because I like not knowing, and partly because I'm not crazy.

That tall grass is home to snakes and plenty of other things I have no intention of surprising. I'm happy to give it room.

So I watch from a distance, usually early in the morning, before the heat starts building and everything disappears into whatever crack, bush, or shadow it has found.

If I want a picture, the camera better already be in my hand.

He's fast. Any movement can startle him, and by the time I lift the camera, he's usually gone.

Most of the time, I don't get the photo.

I just get the moment.

And after a while, I started thinking that's actually the part I like.

It was never really the picture I was after.

It's the noticing.

Read more

Only the Desert Could Explain It

For many years I thought efficiency meant staying busy. Now I think it means knowing which twelve percent to gorge on and which eighty-eight percent to let pass you by, because it's not yours to hold.

There's an interesting creature in the desert called a gila monster. It's interesting to me because it does not sip water like other creatures out here in the desert. It doesn't drink a little here and a little there, hedging against a dry season that might not come. When the rain finally shows up, it drinks like the rain might never show up again, taking in close to a fifth of its own body weight in one sitting. Then it stores what it doesn't need yet in its bladder, and over the next weeks or months, as the desert dries back out, its body pulls that water back into circulation, slowly, on its own schedule. Some gila monsters can go almost three months without drinking again. Not because they need less. Because they didn't waste what they had when they had it.

Many years later but just in time… I found an understanding in that kind of conservation but not until I'd already burned through fifteen years not practicing it.

Having worked in travel healthcare. New assignment roughly every thirteen weeks, which sounds like nothing until you've lived it. Every new contract meant relearning a hospital's systems, restocking whatever you'd used up or left behind, finding new housing, packing, driving or flying, unpacking, and starting over, all while still doing the actual job of taking care of people. Thirteen weeks isn't long enough to exhale before you're bracing for the next move. I was spending everything, time, money, mental energy, on a cycle that never let me refill before it asked for more. I wasn't gorging when the rain came. I was sipping constantly, from a source that kept getting smaller, and calling it ambition.

If someone would have asked me back then I would have told you I was fine. Depletion doesn't always look like collapse. Sometimes it just looks like doing the next thing because it's next. What changed wasn't a single moment so much as a slow noticing, the same way you don't see a wash fill during a monsoon so much as you look up and realize it's already moving. I started paying attention to where my time actually went versus where I meant for it to go, and once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

Now if something is wasting my time, I fix it as soon as I recognize it. Not because I need everything perfect, I don't, I've made peace with plenty of loose ends. But I will not sit inside something that's draining me for one more day than it has to, not after spending years doing exactly that without noticing. That's the part of the gila monster I recognize most now. It isn't stingy. It isn't anxious about scarcity. It just doesn't waste what's already scarce by nature. There's a difference between hoarding out of fear and conserving because you finally understand what a resource costs you to lose.

For a long time, the thing I conserved everything around was my kids. When they were small, my priorities weren't really a question, they were decided for me the moment I decided them for myself. Everything I had went toward keeping them fed, steady, and okay. That wasn't depletion in the same way the travel years were, because it had a shape and a reason I chose. It was more like the gila monster spending its reserve on purpose, not carelessly, but because that's what the reserve was for.

Now it's just me. And here's the thing nobody tells you about reaching the other side of that season, the ambition doesn't necessarily come back. I don't have that same go-go-get-it drive I used to carry, the one that filled thirteen-week gaps with more thirteen-week gaps because slowing down felt like falling behind. I used to think that drive was who I was. Turns out it was mostly just momentum, the kind you can't tell apart from purpose until it stops.

What I have instead is smaller, and I think truer. I've hit the point where I know which things actually make me happy, and it's a much shorter list than I would have guessed twenty years ago. My kids being healthy. My kids being happy, on their own terms, not mine. Hearing them talk about their jobs, their days, the small stuff that's got them excited, that does something for me that no amount of chasing ever did. It isn't dramatic, it's not a finish line, it's just the reserve I actually draw from now, the water I stored when I wasn't wasting it on things that were never going to fill me back up.

Maybe that's the real lesson sitting underneath all that scarcity out here. The desert isn't stingy for the sake of being stingy, it's efficient because it has to be, and somewhere in that efficiency is a kind of honesty most of us don't get access to until something forces it on us. I didn't choose stillness. It found me after fifteen years of running on a schedule that was never mine to begin with. But once it found me, it did what the desert does to everything that survives out here. It taught me what was actually worth holding onto, and it let the rest evaporate.

I don't know that I'll ever get that ambition back, the old version of it anyway. Some days I still wonder if I should want it back. But then I think about the gila monster, waiting out its dry season, not anxious, not idle, just conserving what it has because it knows exactly what that water is for. And I think maybe I'm not depleted at all. Maybe I just finally learned where to spend myself and where to stop.

Only the desert could explain that to me. Nothing else out there moves slow enough, or wastes little enough, to make the lesson land.

If you've made it this far, thank you for sitting with me in this one. If "Only the Desert Could Explain It" struck something in you, consider subscribing, it's free, and it's the best way to keep these essays landing in your inbox a few times a week. If you're already here, I'd love to hear it, what's the thing you've learned to stop wasting. Drop it in the comments, I read every one.

• MJ

Some mornings don't start with inspiration. They start with exhaustion.

Last night I never really slept. I kept waking up, dozing off for a stretch, waking up again, never getting the kind of rest that actually resets you. Before I even opened my eyes, one of the cats was already outside meowing, letting me know the day had started whether I was ready for it or not.

My first thought wasn't anything ambitious. It was just, I wish I could go back to sleep.

Then my brain did the thing it does, running through everything waiting for me. The writing. The projects. All the small responsibilities that add up to a day. There's a kind of quiet pressure I put on myself to keep building the life I actually want, and on a night like that, even that pressure feels tiring.

It's strange how being tired changes the shape of things. The same list that feels doable, even exciting, on a rested morning can feel like way too much after a night like that. Nothing on it changed. I did.

By the time I got outside, the desert was already heating up. Summer out here runs on its own clock. Early morning is when everything moves. Birds are loud, rabbits show up in the yard for a while, the cats wander around like they've got somewhere to be. Then the heat rolls in and by afternoon it's dead quiet. Nothing's rushing. Nothing's trying to prove anything. The desert just waits the heat out until evening.

I keep thinking people work the same way. Some seasons you move fast. Other seasons the only job is to get through the heat until it's evening again.

I've also been sitting with something quieter than all that. It's been six years since my life changed in a way I didn't choose and didn't see coming. Grief doesn't leave on any kind of schedule. For a long time it's just there, every day, and then slowly, without you noticing exactly when, you start making plans again. You catch yourself dreaming a little. You start recognizing pieces of who you used to be.

I think that's roughly where I am right now. Not done with it. Not at some finish line. Just finding my footing again, one morning at a time, even the rough ones like last night.

If I could say one thing to myself, still further down this road, it'd be simple: don't quit. I know some mornings are heavier than others. I know tired changes everything, including how far away the life you want can feel. Keep going anyway. It's still there, waiting, one ordinary morning at a time.

— MJ

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My neighbors had landscapers come out and build burrows for the tortoises that roam our stretch of desert. Not to keep them. You can't legally keep a wild desert tortoise as a pet, and nobody out here would want to. It's just to give them somewhere good to be. We watch them from a distance, slow and unbothered, digging in when the day gets to be too much, coming back out when it isn't anymore.

A desert tortoise's own burrow can run ten feet deep, sometimes deeper. Cool enough in summer to survive it. Warm enough in winter not to freeze. It can take years to dig one properly, not in a rush, not all at once, just steady work fit in around everything else it has to do to stay alive out here.

And here's the part that gets me every time I think about it. The burrow doesn't stop being useful when the tortoise isn't in it. Owls move in. Snakes use it to escape the heat. Insects and rodents pass through the same burrow long after the tortoise that dug it has wandered off to dig another one. Biologists have documented more than 350 species using tortoise burrows at one point or another. My neighbors didn't build theirs for all of that. They built it for the tortoises they love watching. Everything else that ends up using it is just what happens when you build something well.

I think about that a lot when it comes to what I put into the world.

I didn't come out here on purpose, not really. I'd spent fifteen years traveling for work, moving too fast to notice I was moving at all, until an injury and losing someone I loved landed on top of each other and the stress of it all finally caught up to me. I had to stop. There wasn't a version of continuing that was going to work. The desert didn't invite me in gently. It forced me to slow down because I didn't have anything left to keep moving. And somewhere in all that stillness I didn't ask for, I started seeing things differently. Not better, necessarily. Just differently.

Back then, working in the medical field, I never knew where I'd actually be staying. Some of the clinics were in areas that weren't safe to be in for long, so I'd have to figure out somewhere to sleep, sometimes an hour's drive from the job, and do that same drive again the next morning. Uncertainty wasn't the exception. It was the baseline. I got so used to not knowing where I'd be that I stopped noticing it as a problem.

Out here, some mornings I watch the cowboys move cattle through the desert, one pasture to the next, same slow route, same unhurried pace, because that's simply what the land and the season call for that week. Nothing about it is urgent. It doesn't need to be.

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Remembering the first time I heard coyotes, I had no idea what I was listening to. Growing up in town, nights were filled with familiar sounds, cars in the distance, barking dogs, and the occasional siren. One time when I went camping in the desert, and after the sun disappeared, something called out across the darkness. It didn't sound like a dog. It didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard before. For a moment, all I could think was, What kind of animal is that? It's a sound that's hard to describe if you've never heard it, but once you have, you never forget it. I must say the desert has a voice all its own, and for me, that was the first time I heard it speak.

Nowadays, hearing coyotes is simply part of life. When I'm outside in the evenings I'm taking care of the cats as the sun goes down. Before I hear the first coyote, the cats usually know. Their ears perk up, a few of them stop what they're doing, and they quietly start making their way toward safer places. I've learned to pay attention to them because they're often the first sign that something is moving through the desert. Then it comes. A howl in the distance. Another one answers. Before long, their voices drift across the desert as though they're passing messages from one ridge to the next. I love hearing them.

What might surprise some people is when I tell them I live where coyotes roam. They probably assume I must be frightened every time I hear them. That's never really been the case. I respect them. If they sound too close, I go inside because I'm usually out there by myself, and my cat Nebby certainly isn't going to protect me from a pack of coyotes. Being cautious isn't the same as being afraid. It's no different than watching where you step because there might be a rattlesnake nearby, or remembering that badgers, bobcats, mountain lions, and plenty of other wild animals call this desert home. Out here, paying attention is simply part of living in the desert.

There was one night while camping near Quartzsite, Arizona, I was reminded just how close wild things can be. I heard something outside my campsite and stepped out to have a look. I'd parked near a ravine, and it didn't take long to realize I was probably camped beside a coyote den. That definitely got my attention. But what I remember just as clearly were the little foxes. They are some of the cutest animals I've ever seen. At first glance they almost look like baby coyotes, but then you notice their tiny faces, oversized ears, and curious expressions. Seeing them out there felt like stumbling onto one of the desert's quieter secrets, one of those moments that reminds you how much life is happening while most people think the desert is empty.

The more time I've spent here, I realize that the desert is always awake. Even when it looks still, something is moving. Coyotes follow their trails through the washes. Foxes slip quietly through the brush. Owls begin their nightly hunt as daylight disappears. The rabbits know where to hide, and somehow the cats seem to notice it all before I do. There is a rhythm to the desert after dark, and once you begin recognizing it, the night never feels silent again.

Now when the coyotes finally grow quiet, I don't stand there wondering what they meant or trying to catch one last glimpse of them. I simply go back to whatever I was doing. Maybe I finish feeding the cats, maybe I put things away before heading inside. Life just continues. I'm not frightened because the coyotes passed through. I'm simply aware that I'm sharing this place with wild animals, and that means paying attention. Whether it's a coyote, a rattlesnake hidden beside the trail, or any other creature that belongs here, being aware is just part of living responsibly in the desert.

Maybe that's the biggest change from that first camping trip all those years ago. Back then, the coyotes sounded mysterious because everything about the desert was unfamiliar. Now their voices feel like part of the neighborhood. Not because I've stopped respecting them, but because they've become one more reminder that this landscape has its own routines, its own residents, and its own way of moving through the night. When the first howl drifts across the desert, I still stop and listen. Not because I'm trying to figure out what I'm hearing anymore, but because it wouldn't feel like the desert without it.

Thank you for spending a few quiet minutes with me today. If there's a sound that instantly takes you back to a place you love, I'd enjoy hearing about it in the comments. If you think someone else would appreciate this little glimpse into the desert after dark, I'd be grateful if you shared it with them.

The Desert Pause is reader-supported. Free subscriptions are always welcome, and paid subscriptions help keep these quiet desert stories coming.

— MJ

The Desert Pause 🌵

The Desert Waits for Rain

Every morning begins the same way.

Before I think about breakfast or decide what the day will hold, I walk outside to check on an old black horse that roams the desert. Some mornings she empties her water trough. Other mornings she barely takes a drink. After enough years together, I've learned not to expect every day to be the same.

That morning, as I carried fresh water toward her, I noticed it before I saw a single cloud.

The desert smelled like rain.

If you've never lived in the desert, it's hard to describe. The heat is still there, but the air changes. There's a scent that wasn't there a few minutes before, and after enough time out here, you learn to recognize it. You don't have to see the rain to know it's coming.

The moment I catch that smell, something changes in me too.

I stop thinking about everything I need to do. I stop worrying about what time it is. Instead, I find myself looking toward the mountains, wondering if the clouds will make it this far. If they do, I already know where I'll be.

I'll be sitting on the porch.

There's something about desert rain that invites you to be still. I like listening to it fall on ground that's been waiting for weeks. I breathe in the smell of wet creosote and desert soil and let the quiet settle in around me. Even if the rain only lasts a little while, it somehow feels like the whole desert exhales.

I've noticed the animals feel it too.

The feral cats seem quieter. The old horse stands a little differently. Sometimes there are fewer birds in the sky or less movement across the desert, as if every living thing has sensed the change before the first drop ever falls. Out here, you begin to notice those little things. The desert is always paying attention.

Living here didn't change me overnight.

It happened so slowly that I almost didn't notice it. One season became another, and somewhere along the way I stopped trying to rush every moment. The weather doesn't follow my plans, and neither does the desert. Some days are for working. Some days are for waiting. Some days are simply meant to be experienced.

Maybe that's why I write so often about slowing down.

It isn't because I think life should always move slowly. It's because I've learned that some of the best moments can't be hurried. They arrive when they arrive, and all we can really do is notice them.

That morning, I walked outside to make sure an old horse had enough water.

Instead, the desert reminded me that rain was on its way.

Sometimes that's all it takes to change the rhythm of an entire day.

---

Thank you for spending a few quiet minutes here with me.

If this brought to mind a place you've loved, a familiar smell, or a small moment that has stayed with you, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Until next time,

— MJ 🌵

Private Journal • Wednesday

There are mornings when I wake up feeling like I'm still twenty-five.

Not because I look twenty-five, and certainly not because my body agrees with me, but because my mind is still full of ideas. I still wake up dreaming about places I want to see, things I want to build, stories I want to tell, and little adventures that haven't happened yet.

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The Desert Is Never Empty

One of the biggest misconceptions about the desert is that it's empty.

People drive through it with their windows up and think there's nothing out there but dirt, cactus, and miles of open space. I understand why they think that. From the highway, it can look quiet and lifeless.

But quiet isn't the same as empty.

When I head out for my morning walk, the first thing I notice is the peacefulness. I always find myself looking at the sky before I look at the ground. Then my eyes wander to the little creatures playing in the grass, birds moving from bush to bush, and the wild feral cats weaving through the desert like they know every inch of it. They do. I'm the visitor out here.

I walk through a farming community, and it's never quite the same from one month to the next. Sometimes the fields are lush and green, and whatever they're growing rolls with the wind like waves. Then harvest comes, and suddenly everything looks dry and dead. If you only looked once, you'd probably think all the life had disappeared.

It hasn't.

It's just harder to see.

That's something the desert has taught me. Most of the life out here doesn't announce itself. Lizards slip beneath rocks the moment they hear a footstep. Tiny birds vanish into the brush. All kinds of little creatures scurry away before you even realize they were there. But if you stop walking for a few minutes and simply wait, everything begins to come back. Birds land again. A lizard pokes its head out from behind a rock. Something rustles through the grass, and suddenly you realize you were surrounded by life the entire time.

Most of my walks aren't silent. I'm usually talking into my phone, trying to capture a thought before it disappears. By the time I get home, those little voice recordings often become the pages you read here in The Desert Pause. Somewhere between the sky, the dirt roads, and the sound of my own footsteps, my thoughts seem to make a little more sense.

Then there are the cats.

They make every walk different. Some mornings they'll wander right past me like we've known each other forever. Other times I'll catch a pair of eyes staring at me from the tall grass. A truly feral cat can disappear so completely that all you see are those watchful eyes, wondering why this strange human keeps wandering through its neighborhood. It still makes me laugh every single time.

The desert has its own scent, too. Some mornings it's sage drifting through the air. Other days it's the smell of damp clay after a rainstorm. I wish I could bottle that smell because it instantly makes me slow down. It's comforting in a way that's hard to explain unless you've experienced it yourself.

The longer I spend out here, the more I realize the desert isn't asking me to be impressed by it. It isn't trying to entertain me or compete for my attention. It simply waits. The more patient I become, the more it reveals itself. That's true of the wildlife, the changing fields, the cats, and maybe even my own thoughts.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back every morning.

Not because I'm looking for something extraordinary, but because the ordinary keeps surprising me.

The desert was never empty.

I just had to slow down long enough to notice.

Thank you for taking a walk with me through The Desert Pause.

I'd love to hear from you. Have you ever discovered that a place you thought was ordinary was actually full of life once you slowed down enough to really notice it?

Me standing here longer than I expected.

Just a tortoise making its way across the desert. No hurry. No drama. Just one slow step after another. For some reason, I couldn't look away.

These days it seems like everything around us rewards speed. Faster replies. Faster results. Faster lives. Somewhere along the way, it became easy to believe that if we're not moving quickly, we're somehow falling behind.

The desert doesn't seem to care about any of that. Out here, nothing feels rushed. The saguaros aren't in a race. The mountains don't wake up wondering if they're behind schedule. Even the sunrise takes its time, stretching across the horizon like it has nowhere else to be.

As I watched that tortoise, I caught myself smiling. It wasn't trying to impress anyone or prove anything. It wasn't worried about how long it would take to get where it was going. It simply kept putting one foot in front of the other, as if the journey itself was enough.

I could probably use a little more of that.

Not because life should always be slow. There are seasons that ask us to move quickly, and that's part of living too. But maybe we don't have to rush through every single day. Maybe some moments deserve more than a passing glance.

The pause isn't really about stopping. It's about paying attention to what's already happening around us. It's noticing the light, the breeze, the quiet, or even a tortoise crossing the desert while the rest of the world is busy racing somewhere else.

Sometimes the ordinary can remind us of something we've known all along.

Sometimes the next step is enough.

Thanks for spending a little time here in The Desert Pause.

If this reflection resonated with you, I'd love to hear about a moment when slowing down changed the way you saw something. Feel free to leave a comment, share this with someone who might need a pause today, and subscribe if you'd like to wander the desert with me again.